Pump Fun Partnership With Trader Kimchi Unravels After Token Plunge

A promotional partnership between memecoin creation platform Pump Fun and prominent crypto trader Clayton Kim, known online as Kimchi, disintegrated following a chaotic token rollout ¹. The collaboration was arranged to market Pump Fun's "Pill Your Friends" marketing drive, with platform co-founder Alon Cohen praising Kim as a breakout trader celebrity while the protocol urged participants to follow his trajectory ¹. However, official platform posts were met with Community Notes highlighting that wallets connected to Kim showed a history of token sniping ¹.

Disorder escalated when Kimchi's X account published an image of a QR code directing users to a new asset titled Project Kimchi ¹. The newly launched token rapidly surged to a $14 million market valuation before suffering an immediate collapse to approximately $600,000 within minutes, eventually sliding further to $183,000 ¹. Cohen briefly reposted the announcement before undoing the share ¹. Following the collapse, Kimchi's profile deleted references to Pump Fun and purged the platform's branding from his account biography ¹.

Scrutiny Over Mismanagement and Trade Records

The erratic launch prompted community allegations regarding a potential account compromise, though market observers pointed to anomalies in the narrative ¹. Crypto trader Fabiano observed that Cohen issued no security or compromise warnings after removing his repost, arguing that a coordinated rollout followed by the sudden deletion of promotional posts signaled internal discord or deliberate mismanagement rather than an external intrusion ¹.

The incident has also renewed attention on the factual accuracy of Pump Fun's marketing materials ¹. During the campaign, the platform repeated assertions that Kim generated over $40 million trading $TRUMP ¹. On-chain analysis from Bubblemaps contradicted the claim, documenting that Kimchi's verifiable public wallet gains were instead near $6 million, noting that any alternate addresses with substantial holdings would have likely been disclosed previously ¹. Kim's scarce public appearances—including a solitary promotional vlog recorded on a private jet—continue to face community skepticism as neither party has clarified the token rollout ¹.